From: ramesh@utdallas.edu (R. Ramesh) Subject: Re: Diamond SVGA Cards Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 22:47:50 GMT
In article <1992Sep29.000947.17731@news.dfrf.nasa.gov>, blee@halon.dfrf.nasa.gov (Bryson Lee) writes:
|> I don't mean to reopen any festering sores with this post, but I'm hoping to
|> get some info that I think came out here a while back. After failing to get
|> a TsengLabs VGA Mentor card to work reliably with my PC (either under DOS or
|> Linux), I have purchased a Diamond Speedstar Plus w/512K. Considering some of
|> the discussions about that vendor in the last few weeks, I had reservations,
|> but the price was right and the return policy excellent.
|>
|> Anyway, the card seemed to work a treat after I installed it and fired up
|> Linux (the SLS 0.96c_pl2 variety, BTW). It did X at 640x480 physical (800x600
|> virtual) with no problems. However, once I rebooted into DOS to check
|> operation there and then went back to Linux, the server would hang during
|> startup and force me to reboot the machine. If I then went back and tried to
|> run at a virtual resolution higher than the card would support, let it fail,
|> and tried again at 800x600, things once again worked fine. I guess this
|> problem is related to clocks on the card, but I'm not sure.
|>
|> If someone could mail me a recap of the problems with Diamond ET4000 cards, it
|> would help me decide if I should write this one off and try another vendor,
|> or live within this card's limitations.
|>
|> Thanks in advance,
|>
|> Bryson Lee
|> blee@halon.dfrf.nasa.gov
|>
I was told that speedstar+ and new ET4000 cards come with programmable clocks.
At boot time typically only few of the 8 (or 16) are programmed and others
are left at random (?) values. If you access one of those values iwthout
knowing what it can do,the result can be unexpected. This probably explains
why xv1.0 runs on my card and v2.0 doesn't.
In your case trying an impossible resolution may trigger the setting of all
clocks - Don't quote me, I am just trying to explain with very little
knowledge I have on these beasts.
Ramesh